1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to screen display in a portable information communication terminal such as a cellular phone.
2. Description of Related Art
In a portable information communication terminal such as a cellular phone, information and the like obtained through the Internet have been conventionally displayed on a screen. If there is too much information to be displayed, only part of the information can be displayed on a screen sometimes. To cope with this, menu structure is adopted to display information the user wants.
Referring to FIG. 19, a mode of displaying information wherein menu structure is adopted according to prior art will be described. A menu 310 is displayed on the screen 300 of a cellular phone. The menu 310 contains three different menu items, A, B, and C, and the user selects any one of them. In the example in FIG. 19, the user uses a cursor to select “B.” When the menu item is selected, information corresponding to the menu item is displayed. In this case, B1, B2, and B3 corresponding to menu item “B” are displayed on the screen 300. If menu item “A” is selected, A1, A2, and A3 are displayed on the screen 300; if menu item “C” is selected, C1, C2, C3, and C4 are displayed.
As mentioned above, if menu structure is adopted, the user can display information the user wants and specifies. For example, if the user desires to display information B2, the user only has to select menu item “B.” However, with menu structure, the user has difficulty in grasping how many pieces of information there are. If the user selects a menu item to display pieces of information and totalizes them, the user can grasp the number of pieces of information (e.g. 3+3+4=10). However, this is troublesome.
Pieces of information corresponding to different menu items cannot be simultaneously displayed. For example, the user cannot display information A3 and information B1 at the same time.
As mentioned above, if menu structure is adopted, pieces of information are separately displayed on a menu item-by-menu item basis. This causes inconvenience.